Free Republic

Jihad rages already in neighboring Nigeria, and now it is spreading to other areas of West Africa. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas: Faced with a growing threat from Islamic militants, Niger is deploying extra troops to its troubled northern deserts with plans to multiply army patrols and set up a permanent forward operating base to improve security, the defense minister said Tuesday. Fighters from the Salafist Group for Call and Combat are operating in Niger, and the army has battled them several times since Feb. 22, Defense Minister Hassane Bonta told reporters during a rare news conference. The Salafist...

Muslim Missionaries Recruiting Africans For Holy War POSTED: 12:44 p.m. EST February 23, 2004 PEMBA, Tanzania -- Muslim missionaries from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan have been visiting mosques in East Africa to recruit young men for holy war. Moderate Muslim leaders say the part-time preachers go from mosque to mosque spouting sermons of hate, then offer young men a chance to wage holy war in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. A moderate Muslim leader in Tanzania says most older clerics try to warn their congregations that the extremists distort Islam. Most people in Zanzibar follow a mystical form of Sufi...

KANO— HUNTERS in Borno State have shot dead seven Islamic radicals who were fleeing a military crackdown on a group inspired by the Afghan Taliban militia. On Tuesday, 13 members of the Muhajirun sect arrived in the village of Sandiya in the state, preaching and demanding transport after their vehicle broke down, villagers said. They shot dead the leader of a local group of hunters, triggering a bloody confrontation in which seven of the Islamic gang were shot dead. The remaining six fled into the bush. Police in the Borno State capital, Maiduguri, yesterday showed journalists seven bodies and 13...

Kenyans on trial for terror attacks Murder charges against the three were dropped in November The trial of three Kenyans charged with plotting to bomb the US embassy in Nairobi has opened. They are accused of "conspiracy to commit a felony" over the blast which killed 213 in 1998 and of plotting to blow up the new embassy last year. They are also charged with involvement in last year's suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel near the resort of Mombasa, which killed at least 12. The al-Qaeda network has said it carried out the 1998 embassy bombing. Mohammed Kubwa...

The American presence here has helped thwart at least three and possibly as many as 10 terrorist attacks in the Horn of Africa region, said Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa. Robeson spoke to press traveling with Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers during a stop at the command's headquarters here Dec. 19. Robeson said the only mission of the 1,400 Americans deployed in the region is counterterrorism. The command uses humanitarian assistance, military-to-military ties, civil-military missions and other means to help the countries of the region...

Imam hails bin Laden as "great man" Thu 4 December, 2003 03:55 By Diadie Ba DAKAR (Reuters) - He's a minority voice in Senegal, but Imam Mamour Fall is not afraid to speak out for Osama bin Laden. Fall's support for America's enemy number one strikes an especially jarring note in Senegal, a relaxed mainly Muslim country on West Africa's coast where religion is confined to mosques and churches and doesn't stray into politics. "I know bin Laden. People want me to insult him and I will not do it. He is a great man, a great strategist, a great...